Apps like Instagram were once about seeing how your friends were doing, seeing who ate what, where and with whom and more unnecessarily details alike. But over the years, they became a source of details that are necessary. They became your news source, for reports like this:
The Israel-Hamas war is all set to escalate. US President Joe Biden reportedly gave $8 billion to assist Israel. To counter this massive funding, BBC reported that Ukraine was smuggling weapons to Hamas.
What you just read in italicized text are two instances of disinformation pointed out by The Guardian, with a wee bit of my own trickery (linking them both as cause and effect). The news about US President Joe Biden’s $8 billion funding is from an edited document posted on X (formerly Twitter). And nope, BBC did not report the weapon-smuggling thing; it was from a fake video masquerading to be from BBC. (Now that you know it, please do me a favour and don’t share that bit out of context ᓚᘏᗢ. Thanks!)
Both were unrelated and made up news events, but have one thing in common: Both were posted on social media. Out of 8,000 people that Ipsos surveyed from 16 countries with an election next year: 56% rely on social media as their main source of news, more than TV (44%) or news sites (29%). And 85% of people (from the same survey) said they were worried about disinformation’s impact on people.
What do the stats mean?
For starters, they mean more people are relying on a news source that isn’t as reliable as a newspaper, or even a TV news channel (whose job you’ll see stand-up comedians do better; to understand why, read this YKA article by Jaimine), but is easy to use and gets you the news you’ll want (with interest-based targeting).
This also means platforms that are designed & used for entertainment, now have become main distribution outlets for both trusted news sources and spreaders of disinformation. For example, how do you “like” an post on wars and rising emissions?
With its rising popularity, here’s a thing for you to detect: Are social media platforms ideal to be the digital town square of our lives? And what does it mean for journalism?
Problem 1/3: Surveillance Capitalism (it’s as bad as it sounds)
As the primary source of revenue, be it the video-centric YouTube or the text-based Twitter/X, you’ll find ads at the heart of most social media apps you know. If you’re hearing about Pixelfed – a decentralized alternative to Instagram – here for the first time, that’s because it doesn’t rely on ads and doesn’t have the billions to compete with mainstay apps.
On their own, ads aren’t harmful. But social media apps run targeted-ads. For starters, companies track your habits and interests to target you with ads based on them. Say, if you like posts on skin-care, you’ll be seeing ads promoting lotions, serum and alike. Where’s the harm, you ask?
Targeted-ads also are at the core of a concept called surveillance capitalism, a system where your data is the product for sale, and is obtained via surveilling what you do on and off a platform. The more targeted-ads you see, the more likely you’re to purchase something and that equals more money for the social media apps. Along with this data collection comes the risk of data breaches, and constant sharing of data with law enforcement agencies.
As per Shoshana Zuboff, professor emerita at Harvard Business School and the person who coined the term, it’s not just about monitoring your habits, but also “actuating” i.e., influencing them. This means social media apps condition our actions with app design that silently nudges us towards doing something that helps their bottom line (even at the cost of our time and mental health), like Instagram’s infinite-scrolling feeds and YouTube’s auto-playing videos.
Viewing it as a risk to democracy, and your freedom of thought & action in a Q&A with The Harvard Gazette in 2019, she goes on to say:
Long-story short: Ethical business models matter, and social media hasn’t got one. Should you want to deep-dive into the privacy concerns of surveillance capitalism, you can read this YKA article by yours truly (because yes, it’s a whole new Pandora’s box of woes and needs a separate article).
Problem 2/3: The rigged pay-to-play model
If you have ever played a game in the last decade, you may have come across in-app purchases for skins, upgrades and in-game currency. In short, you pay for things that make you win more against those who don’t. Social media did a Ctrl+C on this idea, with added real-world implications.
Ever since Facebook and Instagram have gone mainstream, news sources have found themselves relying on them for distribution. And the social media giants have taken note. If you’re a small business or a regular poster, you know organic reach has gotten tougher over the years; less than 10% of your own followers will see and like your posts.
Instagram, Facebook and X have already launched their own paid-verification programs, where you pay $12-15 (to Meta in the EU) or $8 a month (to X) a month for a tick-mark next to your username and boosted reach. If you run a media company, be ready to shell out a cool $1,000 per month on X. This not only skews the distribution game – and by extension, the overall conversation on a subject – towards those who can afford to pay for more engagement, i.e., big media houses and companies, but it also violates the ‘End-to-End principle’. As the EFF notes, it means:
Hence, instead of seeing posts from friends and handles you follow i.e., the reason you sign up on any social media app, you now see posts that Instagram (like most social media apps) thinks you may like. This control over what you see, listen and understand means social media, once a great “traffic funnel” for news outlets, has also now turned into an uneven pay-to-play field, biased against issues faced by the minority (like religion and caste based discrimination) and those covering them.
Lowering the barrier to the verified check-mark also means disinformation gets to go wild, due to the (hot) air of credibility the mark brings, along with increased reach. X already proved it with the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Problem 3/3: They are ‘psychoactive drugs.’
That’s how Dr. Greenfield, psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford, Conn., terms social media apps, while speaking to New York Times.
The best thing about newspapers is, you can pick them up when you want to, and leave them when you don’t; you have full control over when you read, what you read and for how much time. And the news that you read aren’t targeted at you, based on your interests.
Things are different with a social media app like say, Instagram or YouTube. By design, they imitate slot machines where you’re lured in with the promise of a reward every time you open the app or pull to refresh, but you don’t know what it is and when you’ll get it. Who liked your post this time? Which video will play next? Did Taylor Swift tease her next album? You never know.
This makes social media a great way for entertainment when you’re feeling tired, but also a terrible way to get your news from (esp. when you’re tired). Consuming news should be a voluntary choice and not an impulse-driven one.
Should I consider deleting my social media account?
For most, social media serves some purpose which can be memes, texting people or building networks. If you rely on it for something essential like getting customers for your small business or bringing attention to an issue that traditional news won’t cover (like dilution of India’s environmental policies), I feel social media’s still the way to go. As rigged as the platforms have become, they remain crucial ways to connect with people.
Deleting your account, while rewarding, is an extreme step to take only if you’re willing and able. What you should consider is, an alternative news medium like a newspaper or this little zine I’m working on <insert black moon emoji> as your primary way of being in the know about what’s happening. Because as much as a 60-second reel from some influencer would like to explain you the war on Gaza’s people, it will inevitably miss out on decades’ of crucial context and you deserve to know it before forming opinions.
What’s your solution here?
With their core business reliant on surveillance capitalism, companies like Meta and Google have near-zero incentive to work towards user-centric design, one that respects your choices. It’s the reason why they’re so terrible for your privacy, are so compulsive and as Shoshana terms their model, “an assault on human autonomy.”
But what if you could take the youthful design & conciseness of social media, the reliability of a newspaper for critical issues and mix them into one idea? Newspapers are better than social media w.r.t factual accuracy and accountability, but they tend to stick to mainstream issues that assure them readership. If you’re learning now that a mega infra project threatens nearly a million (~10 lakh) trees to be cut in Nicobar Islands, and risks displacing indigenous Shompen, Onge & Nicobarese tribes, you now have proof.
This is where Detected, the weekly zine I mentioned earlier, strives to achieve ft. a business model that resists and isn’t based on surveilling you wherever you go (which also enables us to cater to your needs, not advertisers’).
If this explainer made you consider going for a news source outside of social media, I believe you’ll find Detected useful. I’m joined by my friends with this, forming a small team of three, where we design an issue with:
- Curated articles from reliable sources every week, on issues you won’t see the mainstream media discussing anytime soon (like how Chrome’s a ‘threat to privacy & democracy‘)
- A cover story on critical issues and topics relevant to you; this very article is the cover story of i19 (Detected‘s nineteenth issue)
- An incentive to not take our word for things and understand the topic in-depth, straight from the source.
- A business model supported by readers, not advertisers. What you say, goes.
Plus, we do without the tracking shenanigans that enables the mass surveillance which Google & Meta rake in billions from. We do not know which articles you read through Detected, nor we track your reading activity. It’s your private reading experience (as long as you don’t use Chrome, to protect from trackers on news sites).
If you’re interested, you can sign up for our weekly digital subscription via logicdetector.com/subscribe at Rs. 200 for every four weekly issues (referring us to readers like you lowers the cost a bit). If you’d like to well, detect how we design an issue, you may use this link for our latest issue: (Detected i22 · one hope)
In a world of inshorts, AI summaries and one-minute reel explainers, be the one who goes the distance to understand the context behind issues, will you?